Parkshare

Inspiration

Parking in cities is still stressful and inefficient. Drivers often waste time moving around without knowing where to go, whether there are available spots nearby, or if a destination is worth saving for later.

ParkShare was built to make parking navigation more practical: choose a destination, see route information, use saved places, and get help finding nearby parking opportunities.

What it does

ParkShare is a mobile parking assistant that helps drivers search for a destination, navigate there, save exact places, and detect or suggest useful parking areas.

The app supports:

• Destination search with route preview.
• Saved destinations with exact coordinates.
• Tap or long press on the map to choose any point as a destination.
• Parking availability logic and nearby suggestions.
• A clear driving navigation UI.
• An OpenAI-powered parking copilot that explains the best next step in natural language.

How we built it

The mobile app is built with Flutter and Google Maps. The backend is built with Node.js, TypeScript and PostgreSQL, deployed on Render.

OpenAI is used in the backend to generate short, practical parking advice based on the selected destination, route distance, route duration and nearby parking signals. If no parking spots are available, the copilot explains what the driver should do next instead of leaving them with only a generic empty-state message.

Challenges

The hardest parts were making destination selection reliable, keeping saved places exact across regions, handling real route state, and keeping the interface usable while driving.

We also had to make the backend resilient and ensure the OpenAI assistant never invents parking availability.

What we learned

We learned that parking apps need to be more than a map. Drivers need simple decisions, reliable saved destinations and clear explanations when parking data is limited.

What's next

Next steps include improving parking prediction, adding more real-time parking signals, expanding the OpenAI copilot, and polishing the iOS and Android releases for public testing.

Built With

• android
• dart
• flutter
• google-maps-platform
• node.js
• openai
• postgresql
• render
• typescript